Finer Points

For some short videos on practicing Holacracy, check out the Kung Fu of Holacracy series.

When to use accountabilities vs. domains or policies.

When thinking of how to resolve your governance tension, it is difficult to decide between using an accountability, a policy, or a domain to resolve it. Hopefully this guide should shed some light on this issue.

The first question you need to ask is: "Is this a way I need to redirect or restrict someone's actions? Or is it an ongoing expectation I have that someone should be meeting?"

In other words: "Am I redirecting activity or am I creating activity?"

If you're creating activity, then you're looking for an accountability. An accountability asks the role you're requesting it from to do something they wouldn't otherwise be responsible for.

If you're redirecting or restricting activity, then you're looking at a domain or a policy.

A domain is used when it's specifically around a certain something, an "object" that needs to be controlled. Like the website, or our CRM, etc. Domain doesn't mean you own that object. It just means that if someone wanted to impact it, which they would normally be allowed to under Holacracy's "forgiveness not permission" directive, they would now have to check in with you first. And you have the right to prevent said role from impacting your domain if you have good reason for doing so.

There are different kinds of policies:

1 - Policy created on a specific domain: This policy describes how someone can impact a domain, so that they don't need to consistently check in with the domain owner.

eg: When publishing content to our blog, any partner must follow X language and style guidelines.

This kind of policy is created, at any time, by the domain owner. If the domain is owned by a role this policy doesn't need to be done in a governance meeting. The owner simply authors it.

If, however, the domain is owned by the whole circle and not subsequently given to a specific role, policies need to be passed in that circle's governance.

2 - General Policies not attached to a specific domain. These policies are restrictions or guidelines impacting the entire circle and any subsequent role or sub-circle. So the ones passed in GCC impact everyone in the organization.

These policies are not about how to impact a domain, they are generally about creating guidelines for the organization.

The same rule applies though that they should be restricting or redirecting action, not creating it.

Crafting these policies is much more an art than a science though, and in some cases these policies can be used in lieu of creating accountabilities on every role in a circle, which is cumbersome and difficult to later edit or refine. That is the one exception where a policy can be used to create action instead of just restrict it. But even then it is important to give the very specific context in which this action is to be created. So we use the "when X then Y" format.

How to know if you have a governance tension

One of the disadvantages of running without distributed governance, is that we can fall easily out of practice of sensing, naming, and processing governance tensions. But processing these tensions is vital to the success, maturation, and evolution of our organization. These questions should help you sense whether or not you have governance tensions, and should be asked often, at least with the weekly review.

• Do I feel clear autonomy over my work? Or am I having to build consensus and check in constantly before making decisions? (Holacracy is designed so that any decision that needs to be made should lie with one role only, if you choose to garner feedback on your work that's fine, but if you are asking for permission to make decisions then something is not clear in governance)

• Is it clear to me, when others are agreeing or disagreeing with me, when they are giving me an opinion and when I need to shift my decision based on theirs?

• Am I still asking my Lead Link(s) for guidance around decisions not having to do with prioritizing my work or giving me feedback on role fit? (A "yes" here indicates some legacy habits from management. Lead Links should support you in prioritizing work and giving you feedback on fit, as well as establishing goals for your roles and circle. They are not managers, and shouldn't be influencing your decisions any more than any other person giving you feedback)

• Do I sense that I am constantly stepping on someone's toes, or they're stepping on mine?

• Has it been clear to me who I should ask to do what? Or has work in our circle been dropped because it's no one's responsibility?

• Are the purposes of my roles inspiring me to do the work while at the same time being discrete, grounded, and clear enough that they help me say "no" to some work as well as "yes"?

• Have I been spending time repeatedly doing tasks that don't fit under any of my explicitly stated roles and accountabilities?

• Looking at my circle's purpose, do we have all the roles we need to fulfill this purpose? Are there any missing links or gaping holes in our structure?

• Is there anything that I'm implicitly expecting of my own roles or of roles around me that isn't explicitly stated?

• Is there some resource of circle that is being negatively impacted by all of us using it independently without coordination? (For example many different roles are posting to our facebook page without any coherent messaging or style. This would be a place for domain)

• The word “should” is coming up:

  -- Who should do this?

  -- Why should I do that?

  -- Shouldn’t so and so take care of this?

  "Should" denotes responsibility and accountability… If you’re thinking it, it’s a clear sign that a governance tension is arising for you.